Everything You Need to Know About SASE Solutions in China
With work-from-anywhere employees increasingly relying on cloud collaboration tools, enterprises need to look for SASE solutions that can secure their remote workforce without increasing IT overhead.
Fortinet FTNT offers a single-vendor SASE solution combining SD-WAN, AI-powered secure web gateway (SWG), CASB, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) in a cloud-delivered and cloud-managed service.
What is SASE?
Secure access service edge (SASE) unifies networking and security services in a cloud-delivered architecture to protect users, applications, and data from everywhere. Its primary benefits include reduced risk through Zero Trust principles, improved performance and latency for hybrid work, and leveraging a global edge network for endpoint protection without VPNs.
Fortinet’s SASE solutions in China use SD-WAN infrastructure to deliver a unified security framework that runs end-to-end on the edge. It eliminates the need for traditional hardware appliances at the network edge and allows for more agile, cost-effective implementations. It also delivers a more consistent experience across different locations and devices and simplified management.
A true SASE solution will offer converged networking and security capability, including NGFW-as-a-service, CASB, SWG, and ZTNA. It should be designed to handle all network edges – on-site, remote, and public Wi-Fi – and be able to identify user and device identity as well as application context for policy enforcement.
To optimize the effectiveness of SASE, both network and security professionals must deploy it to ensure a seamless deployment. It requires a clear understanding of the capabilities and limitations of each tool to avoid redundancies and overlaps. Choosing a single-vendor SASE solution is also important to simplify the deployment process and accelerate time to value.
Why is SASE important?
SASE is important because it provides an alternative to existing network approaches and technologies that fail to meet digital organizations’ connectivity, security, and access requirements. These organizations demand immediate, uninterrupted access to apps and data from Work-from-Anywhere (WFA) employees, cloud service providers, and other resources. Moreover, they require consistent protection regardless of user or device location. SASE solves these challenges by merging networking and security functions in an integrated, unified platform that can be managed with one set of policies.
SASE leverages ubiquitous connectivity based on cloud technology to merge SD-WAN capabilities with a broad array of network and security functions, such as branch firewall-as-a-service, software-as-a-service (SaaS), Secure Web Gateway (SWG), CASB, and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). It creates a single platform that delivers the flexibility and scalable security frameworks businesses need to protect their applications and data from malicious actors inside or outside the corporate network.
In addition, SASE delivers various cost benefits by reducing the number of point products, appliances, and agents IT teams must deploy, manage, and monitor. It also reduces maintenance, upgrades, and hardware refresh costs by shifting these responsibilities to a trusted cloud provider. Given the rapid rate of change in networks today, this is a critical capability, especially in remote and mobile offices where devices constantly change locations.
What is the SASE solution?
Fortinet’s security service edge (SASE) solution combines networking and security functions into a unified offering. The platform combines cloud-delivered security, such as a secure web gateway, cloud access security broker, and firewalls, with network capabilities like SD-WAN and universal zero trust network access (ZTNA).
This approach helps enterprises close the gap between work-from-anywhere users and the applications they need to use. The solution is scalable and can be managed with an intuitive interface from one console. It also provides consistent security posture and optimal user experience across the enterprise network.
With the rapid growth of cloud and SaaS applications, traditional data center security architectures can quickly become overburdened.
The SASE solution leverages cloud-delivered Security Fabric solutions, including next-generation firewall, IPS/IDS, WAF, and secure access services. The platform combines these security and networking features with an automated programmable SD-WAN infrastructure service that can be deployed and configured in minutes to meet the business needs of any application on any network. It can securely connect the headquarters with distributed offices, remote workers, branch locations, and cloud and SaaS applications. The system can also ensure that business applications perform best across the enterprise WAN and Internet.
How can the SASE solution help you?
Single-vendor SASE solution provides unified security and simplified management through a suitable agent, cloud-delivered security services, and SD-WAN integration. Backed by AI-powered security services, this solution allows organizations to close security gaps and deliver a work-from-anywhere user experience.
Securing the hybrid workforce is a top priority for many enterprises. To support their needs, a unified SASE solution should provide consistent and scalable security policies, regardless of device type. SASE should also be easy to deploy, minimize network latency, and support the widest range of applications.
SASE solution uses a clientless browser plug-in supported by almost all devices to establish a secure connection to a FortiSASE point of presence (PoP) to address these requirements. A PoP is where Fortinet’s security services are located and where the user traffic gets inspected before being routed to its final destination. Depending on the device’s operating system, this is done using either TLS or IPSec.
Fortinet’s SASE solution offers a flexible, scalable architecture to meet any enterprise’s needs. FortiOS runs the full SASE stack – including bi-directional firewall, SD-WAN, SSL VPN, encryption/decryption, CASB, and DLP – providing all edges with consistent networking and security policies. Fortinet’s global SASE PoP network is backed by a scalable cloud infrastructure, ensuring high performance and availability for users worldwide.
